‘Black Swan’ murder trial: Ashley Benefield convicted of manslaughter
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(NEW YORK) — Ashley Benefield, the woman at the center of the “Black Swan” murder trial, was convicted of manslaughter on Tuesday night.
The jury in the trial of the ballerina who had been accused of killing her husband, Doug Benefield, returned its verdict late Tuesday night in a Florida courtroom.
She faces up to 30 years in prison. Her sentencing date has yet to be determined.
Ashley Benefield’s attorney argued that she was trapped in an abusive relationship, stating that Doug Benefield was a manipulative, controlling and abusive man. She had argued she killed her husband in self-defense. Prosecutors had accused Ashley of wanting sole custody of the couple’s daughter Emerson.
“This case is about a woman who, very early on in her pregnancy, decided she wanted to be a single mother,” prosecutor Suzanne O’Donnell said. “Her husband and everything she did from that point on was to attain that goal and she would stop at nothing to attain that goal. When there was no other option, she shoots him and kills him and claims self-defense.”
According to court documents filed by the defense, Ashley claims Doug struck her in an incident on Sept. 27, 2020, hitting her on the side of her head, and then tried to keep her from leaving the room.
Ashley claims she feared for her life, shot Doug multiple times in self-defense, and then ran to her neighbor’s house.
(KENOSHA, Wis.) — Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a picturesque community on the shore of Lake Michigan. It is known for its boats, fresh corn at the farmer’s market and the country’s oldest velodrome. However, everything changed when Kenosha burst into the national spotlight in 2020.
Jacob Blake, 29, a father of three, was shot seven times by a local police officer and left paralyzed from the waist down. Following the August 2020 police shooting of Blake, protests, riots, and civil unrest took place in Kenosha and across the United States as part of the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups protesting racial injustice.
Amid looting and riots in Kenosha, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse arrived at the scene armed, stating he was there to protect a car dealership from rioters. As the situation escalated, Rittenhouse shot three men, two of whom died.
Rittenhouse was charged with two felony counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide. A charge of violating a curfew that was imposed during the protests in Kenosha was later dropped.
Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to the charges and, during trial testimony, said he shot all three men with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in self-defense.
Rittenhouse was found not guilty. Embraced by gun rights supporters, he became a symbol of the Second Amendment and gained popularity within the Republican Party.
Now, in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, all eyes are on the state of Wisconsin, a battleground state where Trump recently visited for the Republican National Convention.
Residents of Kenosha are experiencing similar fears they felt four years ago, according to community activist Molly Gray-Moores.
“Oh, my God, are we going backward instead of moving forward?” Gray-Moores said. “We need our city and our nation to come to one place where we all come together. We can’t keep tearing up our city and our nation.”
Gray-Moore’s sentiments also resonate with Kenosha’s new police chief, Patrick Patton, who agrees. Patton was policing a local parade when news broke of the assassination attempt on Trump.
“Whatever side of the fence you fall on, an attack on an elected official or a former sitting president or a candidate for that matter is kind of an attack on our democracy,” Patton said. “The world kind of looks to America as the leaders in that field. So this sets us back. We can’t have it. It’s un-American.”
In rural Kenosha, it’s Trump country, and there has been a wake-up call. Some locals are concerned that people are resorting to violence, using guns instead of voting to get their message across.
“They might not always agree with us, but they have their opinions, we have our opinions,” Diane Biehn, a resident of rural Kenosha, said. “Let’s not take it to that level of violence.”
On the other side of town, a local businessman and barber is trying to increase community participation by holding community engagement sessions in his shop. Topics include the direction of our country and who will lead it.
Alvin Owens operates the Regimen Barber Collective and hopes to engage individuals from diverse backgrounds to advocate for voting and the right to vote.
ABC News spoke with a participant who said they benefited from these conversations and put their apathy toward the current presidential candidates aside.
“I got four children and they’re all boys, and I want them to be kings,” Kyle Smith said. “I want them to be men in the truest sense that they can. And I can’t teach that if I don’t embody it and I may not want to vote, but I got to, man. So, hopefully, I vote for the right person. We’ll see.”
Another participant encourages candidates to appreciate America’s diversity.
“I think that’s really important to go outside of your box and listen to other people and learn who they are, and embrace our diversity, because that’s what America is,” Jami Jastrom said.
As the nation enters the final months of this tumultuous election cycle, both presidential candidates are calling for less angry rhetoric and more unity, a sentiment shared by Kenoshans.
“Let’s work together,” Gray-Moores said. “Everybody has a voice, use it. You don’t have to use anger, you don’t have to use weapons. None of that, that’s not what we’re about.”
(NEW YORK) — A Connecticut woman who was found dead hours before she was scheduled to be sentenced for killing her husband died by suicide after ingesting antifreeze, officials said Monday.
Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi, 76, was found dead at her home on July 24. Troopers responded to the house that morning after an individual reported they were at her residence but were unable to make contact with her, state police said at the time.
Her cause of death is ethylene glycol toxicity, according to the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Kosuda-Bigazzi had pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in March in the 2017 death of her husband, 84-year-old Pierluigi Bigazzi, according to the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice. Police found the University of Connecticut Health doctor and professor dead in the basement of the couple’s Burlington home while responding to a welfare check call from his employer, who had not heard from him for several months, prosecutors said.
Kosuda-Bigazzi also pleaded guilty to first-degree larceny for continuing to receive her husband’s pay following his death, according to the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice. Investigators found checks from her husband’s employer were deposited into the couple’s joint checking account from his death in July 2017 until the discovery of his body in February 2018, prosecutors said.
Her hearing was scheduled for 2 p.m. the day she was found dead.
“We were honored to be her legal counsel and did our very best to defend her in a complex case for the past six years,” her attorney, Patrick Tomasiewicz, said in a statement last month following her death. “She was a very independent woman who was always in control of her own destiny.”
ABC News has reached out to the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice for comment on the case.
Kosuda-Bigazzi had been out of jail while awaiting sentencing after posting more than $1.5 million in bail.
Her husband’s death was ruled a homicide by blunt injuries to the head, according to the medical examiner’s office.
Police found handwritten documents at the home in which she claimed she had killed her husband in self-defense, according to court records.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(MEMPHIS) — Opening statements began on Wednesday in the federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in connection with the January 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Rogers presented the prosecution’s case, explaining to jurors what evidence they can expect to see and warned them that they will watch and hear “horrifying” body camera video and audio over the course of the trial, according to WATN, the ABC affiliate in Memphis covering the case in the courtroom.
“They stood by his dying body and laughed,” Rogers said, describing what happened after the officers were finished beating Nichols, according to WATN. “These will not be easy days.”
Defense attorneys for the former officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — also began presenting opening statements.
John Perry, Bean’s defense attorney, told jurors that they can expect to see that the evidence will show the officers did their job, according to WATN.
“It will take you 5 minutes to deliberate,” Perry said, according to WATN.
Michael Stengel, Haley’s attorney, said that Nichols did not stop for 2 miles after officers turned on their police lights, according to WATN. Stengel claimed that there is no evidence that the officer knew who was driving at the time and there was no personal vendetta concerning rumors of a woman.
“When they got the wallet [of Nichols] after the stop, that’s when they learned who it was,” Stengel said, according to WATN.
Bean, Haley and Smith, along with two other officers involved in the incident, were charged on Sept. 12, 2023, with violating Nichols’ civil rights through excessive use of force, unlawful assault, failing to intervene in the assault and failing to render medical aid – charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The 4-count indictment also charged all five officers with conspiring to engage in misleading conduct by attempting to falsify or intentionally withholding details of the arrest in statements and to a supervisor – charges that carry up to 20 years in prison, per the DOJ.
Bean, Haley and Smith have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, the two additional officers who were also charged in this case, have pleaded guilty to some of the federal charges.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the court records.
Mills pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force, according to the DOJ. The government said it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’s plea agreement.
Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, who attended opening statements, told reporters on Wednesday that she hopes the jury will return a guilty verdict.
“Our hope is that they’re found guilty and to show the world that my son was a good person and he wasn’t the criminal that they’re trying to make him out to be,” she said.
ABC News reached out to the attorneys representing the officers but requests for comment were not immediately returned.
Nichols, 29, died on Jan. 10, 2023 – three days after a traffic stop captured in body camera footage and surveillance footage, which allegedly shows officers violently striking Nichols repeatedly and walking around, talking to each other as Nichols was injured and sitting on the ground. He was also pepper-sprayed and tased during the incident. The beating triggered protests and calls for police reform.
Police said Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, though Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said she has been unable to substantiate that.
Body camera footage shows Nichols getting away from the officers after the initial stop, but he was apprehended minutes later by the officers. He then sustained multiple punches, kicks and hits from a baton from the officers.
Nichols was transferred to the hospital in critical condition where he later died. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report for Nichols showed he “died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma,” the district attorney’s office told Nichols’ family in May 2023.
While Nichols’ mother has said that first responders told her he was drunk and high, the autopsy report shows that his blood alcohol level was .049, the DA’s office said. The district attorney’s office told the family that was “well less than the legal limit to drive.”
The five former officers charged in this case were all members of the Memphis Police Department SCORPION unit – a crime suppression unit that has since been disbanded after Nichols’ death.
Rogers told the jury on Wednesday that the SCORPION unit followed an alleged rule that they called the “run tax,” according to WATN, where it was understood that the first person to reach a running suspect would beat them.
Perry claimed that his client, Bean, was not present at the initial stop and only arrived at the second scene after hearing a call on dispatch radio, according to WATN.
The five officers charged in connection to Nichols’ death were all fired for violating the policies of the Memphis Police Department.
All five former officers also face state felony charges, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping, in connection with Nichols’ death. They pleaded not guilty.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
